


sin nombre

by customrolex



Category: Sin Nombre (2009)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 14:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17830718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/customrolex/pseuds/customrolex
Summary: she rinses her feet a little, wets a bit of rag she hadn't used to fix shoes. she tries to scrub this place's dirt out of her feet. they bleed a little.she wonders if she should clean them properly, or try to imagine she left the dirt from home there, just a little longer.her father tells her not to waste water.she doesn't explain that her bones are worn thru with him as much as walking.





	sin nombre

her father was waiting. she was waiting too but it was she who had to go. 

he speaks over her. she says nothing but it happens all the same. 

 

she's a lady now, he tells someone else. she's so beautiful, he praises someone else. i promise she'll be safe, he tells someone else. she is meant to believe him.   

 

she doesn't want to go. why would she go with someone she didn't know? 

 

they leave before sunrise. sayra finds that hardest of all. she had thought up until the moment she'd seen him that she could still back out—of course she couldn't back out,  _ how stupid _ —but now he was here. he was here and she was realising that she wouldn't be for much longer. one more night: she knew she'd get that. she didn't know she wouldn't get one more day. she didn't know she wouldn't get one more mourning. 

 

he won't come back for her again. she knows this. 

 

he hadn't planned to come back the first time. 

 

it doesn't seem like he has much of a plan now; they are walking and they'll keep walking until they get to where they're going. he shows her a map. it looks like it was pulled from a magazine. it's not enough. the path they've walked has twisted and turned and risen and crashed and he's told her, _ see? we've followed the yellow line.  _

 

it doesn't seem like he has a plan at all. 

 

the phone number, phone number, phone number.

 

this is the worst part of her day: chanting numbers. walking is boring. her lungs hurt. her mouth is dry. she is sore. everything hurts. her mouth is dry and the numbers 

stick going out. 

 

the phone number, number, number, number.

      number, number, number.

it was the worst part of the day and the only part of this that seemed like a plan. go north. call someone who lived in the united states, someone prosperous enough to send her a bus ticket or even enough money to buy that and food, maybe even shelter for a night. this was the best part of the plan. 

 

she wears thru the skin of her feet. 

 

her bones will carry dirt all the way from home. 

 

they drop their valuables. they're not robbed. some things are too nice for the officers to resist. the luckiest curios are least lucky. they strip their clothes. they don't touch her. she shrinks under their gazes. she knows they want to. taking off her shoes is almost the worst part. 

 

she doesn't want her bones to remember this place. 

 

there is no plan. the plan is to wait, and hope a train comes, and hope it turns out to be on the right track, and then hope it stops or slows enough to climb on, and hope they find space to sit or cling, and then to hope that none of them fall. 

 

aren't you even a little bit happy? her uncle asks her. she can't tell if he's unimpressed or sympathetic. she wonders if it matters, if emotion has a difference when you're so sore and tired. there is such a long way to go. she follows her uncle's gaze a short way: her father. 

 

her father was happy to see her, in honduras, 

was thrilled to get past the first border with their group safe and sound and as rich as they'd been when they'd left. 

 

he probably loved her, 

probably had when he was in the states without them. he probably had loved her 

distantly in his heart and from a distance on the map 

and convinced himself that was the same as loving for real. 

 

if he hadn't been deported, he wouldn't be here, she says. it feels like deciding. 

 

the train comes. the train doesn't go.

 

people are dead. people are strewn across the tracks ahead in wreckage and blood and smoke and chance. she should feel badly. instead she resents them their loss, their death, their tragedy. all she can think is that she's stuck here another moment.

 

she doesn't want her bones to remember this place. 

 

she brushes her shoes, stitches a bit of soft plastic and some of her rags into the rubber sole, threading thick black upholstery fabric bartered for sayra's only pens thru the spots not worn thru like her skin. she doesn't want her bones to remember it. she patches her shoes. they'll last for an extra time. the plastic bit should stop the rag from making it hard to walk on the train, when they climb one again. 

 

she trades a little tin earring a friend had given 

her years ago. she lost the other but she'd kept one for the memory. 

she'd brought it with her to trade; she'd bent the hook that used to fit in her ears 

until she could run a silk cord thru the circle and it wouldn't bend loose under its own weight. 

she trades the pendant for a big bottle of water. she adds the cord and the woman gives 

her a bowl of rice and beans from her children's pot. she eats with the small ones. 

she goes back to the camp. it's a spot on the tracks, 

where they'll hear if their train starts up, if the airbrakes 

release and the steam or coal or engine or whatever 

God that's powering them starts again. 

  
  
  


she sits on the rails. she hates the smell of waiting, dirty people, like death,

of train oil and engines. she hates the tack of smoke and the growing tang of her own sweat. she rinses her feet a little, wets a bit of rag she hadn't used for her shoes. she tries to scrub 

this place's dirt out of her feet. they bleed a little. 

 

she wonders if she should clean them properly, or try to imagine she left the dirt from home, 

just a little longer. her father tells her not to waste water. 

she doesn't explain that her bones are worn thru with him as much as walking. 

 

they wait more. they wait and they hope. they hope that the bodies are cleared. sayra wonders if everyone knows they should hope the bodies are sent home. there's nothing worse than 

not knowing. 

she doesn't say anything. there is no way to say that to people full of resentment. her own resentful part muzzles her. she waits. she hopes. 

 

eventually,

 

it's time.

 

they run. they grab. sayra tries to pass up a bag to her uncle; he was ahead of her. her father shouts 

for her to hurry; she can't get a grip on the ladder with the bag but she goes, stepping blindly, with horrible moments where she's not holding on,                  

her free palm jumping from rung to rung to rung to rung until she pressed it flat to the vaguely 

heated surface of the train's roof. she grabbed 

where there was nothing to grab. she grabbed and climbed and clambered and they made it. 

 

the train-

yard dis-

appears behind them. they've made it. they-

're going 

to make

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


they hope. 

then something bad happens. 

 

then something much, much worse nearly happens. 

 

she screams. she shouts. she begs. she fights.

 

her screams are louder 

than the deafening clanking and rattling they've learned to live with; her screams are the loudest things the earth has heard since the mountains formed. she screams and she fights but 

there's a gun and a horrifying man's weight into her ribs, stealing her air. she claws and screams harder and louder than anything since lichens formed dirt on the mountain's new stone. 

 

there's a gun in her face and she can smell the gunpowder—saltpeter and charcoal, like smoke and—and—

and when it's over, she rinses her would-be destroyer's blood from her face, pouring two big palm fulls of water and splashing her face. she wonders if her father wanted to tell her not to waste it. she doesn't dare look to find out. 

when it's all over, she realizes the taste in her mouth is fear. she sips her water. she uses her nail to get a bit of coppered brown from the outer side grooves in the water cap. she scratched her palms until all the coppered brown spots were gone. she hated blood. 

when it's all over, she wonders if she'll ever feel normal again. she figures she'll have to, because it could have been so much worse. 

when it's all over, she looks at him and he's just sitting, feeling his own pain, and she wonders if she'd be carrying both of their rocks. she already can't breathe. if he hadn't done something—

 

i heard a gunshot, she says. no, her father tells her. no, he struck the gangster down with his machete. i heard a gunshot, she said, when the blood—no, her father repeats. 

 

no, you heard the machete, and you heard the air pop with our fear. every person on the train feared for you. 

 

she thinks: _ why didn't any of you help when i screamed? _

 

when it's all over, she's still afraid. 

  
  
  
  


she knows he can tell that people are whispering. 

 

she knows he can't hear them from where he sits, so alone, with the rest of them jammed tighter than ever. the people around her are so afraid; they cower from him and plot his death. it would be so easy to push him off, they whisper.  _ you did not push the other one off when i was the one screaming _ , she thinks. 

 

it would be so easy to protect ourselves from him, they say. she thinks: 

_ you would have seen a part of me killed, but now protection is easy.  _

 

he's afraid too. she knows. she sees it in the way he clings, glancing and suspicious 

when men move closer, creeping along the speeding top.

there is no stealth here. there is nothing atop the train.

 

maybe if he had sat there with his machete at the ready, she might have understood them, but he sat there afraid. he sat there without sleeping, watching, watching, watching. always afraid. 

 

let's push him off, they whisper; we'll be so much safer. 

_ what about when i was screaming for help?  _ she thinks. she eats what she's given and wonders if he's hungry and tired. she wonders:  _ why would they push him  _

_  but not save me?  _

she watches her father pick thru his rice. 

she wonders:  _ why would you let them push him off and  _

_ let the other one take me?  _

 

he's a thug, they say.  _ he gave back your things, _ she thinks. someone might say it too, protesting. she cannot hear so many people anymore, not over the terror that lives in her skull now. she doesn't want her bones to remember this. he's a gangster, they say, poison. 

  
  


_ he saved me,  _ she thinks. 

_  he's the only reason i'm not made of poison too.  _

  
  


let's push him off, they chime, and it feels like deciding. 

she watches them creep to him. 

she waits for him to glance back, suspicious. 

 

she waits for him to glance, suspicious.

 

she waits for him to glance,  _ suspicious.  _

 

she waits for him to  _ glance _ , _ suspicious _ .

 

he is asleep.

 

she yells: _ immigration! immigration!  _

she sounds a false alarm. she sends the noise of panic to wake him, to distract his assassins, 

to save him like he'd saved her. 

 

she'd done less. 

 

he knows not to try to stay awake now. 

like everything atop the train, it is impossible. he knows not to stay awake. he lashes himself to a rung in the roof with his belt, curling away from them and pulling his hood over his eyes. he doesn't know but she keeps watch. she watches as people give him less and less of a berth, spreading their tarps closer as he seems less and less frightening to them. 

 

she'd forgotten what solid ground felt like, stillness.

when they descend the train again. this place is not so bad. 

         she wouldn't mind if her bones remembered this place, but all they can feel is fear. 

there's been nothing but fear since it happened—

there is only nothing above the train—

 

but there's a shower. there's water and it rinses her and it takes the grime and the tack of the train; 

the water takes the grey sheet that has covered her since the early, early morning they left. 

 

the water makes her feel human again, before the fear sets back in as her hair dries, the little curls in her hair flattening out as dampness leaves. 

 

she brings him some food. 

 

it's not enough for him; she knows it will take only the 

edge 

off of hunger. there is nothing aboard the train

but here at least she can take off his edge. 

 

you're not going to wash up? she asks, and he looks ashamed. she didn't mean that. i'll come back, you tell him, so he doesn't think he's alone. 

she didn't think she could feel anything but fear in her bones now 

but when they're alone together, 

she can feel him. she stands near him

—he is wary of her; could he think she is powerful?—

and the weight of the other man on top of her lifts finally

she stops smelling saltpeter and charcoal. 

 

where have you been? your father asks. we can't let anyone separate us, OK?

he warns her. he is always warning her. 

he warns her against everyone. he warns her about everything. 

   when she was screaming, he stood still. 

she screamed louder than anything since the mountains formed here

and he stood still 

willie hit someone with a sword so hard

sayra had sworn she'd heard shots

maybe she shouldn't blame him. 

there was a gun. 

she is his daughter. 

there is a weight on her again 

    and her bones remember fear when they're warned. 

  
  
  


he's on the train when it goes again. she looks to make sure. 

the train goes again

this time nothing awful happens

 

she thinks about things without meaning to sometimes. 

she blames her father. mostly without meaning to. 

he wouldn't have come back for her if he hadn't been deported. he warns her now again and again but he's warning her against someone who listened when she screamed. 

 

they pass a little town and women and children chase after the train. for a horrible moment sayra thinks: there can't be room for them up here

 

but then they're cheering and tossing

sayra realises they're gifts; the people are throwing gifts: 

crusted apples, squashy little sweetsops. 

she catches one. it's small and a little ugly; 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


it's a little tart when she eats it. 

  
  
  


nothing has ever made her so happy. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ gracias _ ! she screams. others join in.  _ gracias _ ! she wants to keep shouting it long after the town has faded beyond the tracks. 

 

she wants to feel gratefulness—and nothing else—forever.

 

she doesn't think they on the train could shout loud enough to express their thanks. they could never explain the greatness of the fruit when there was nothing on the train. 

 

there are little platforms, 

at the back of some cars. maybe it's because some people 

are still afraid of wilie but they get to sit there all day. 

they stay until night, where it's easy to hold on, 

where it's just a bit easier; you can lean against 

_ something _ , at least.

 

the metal wall is hard and cold and the rust flakes into her hair and her skin but it is so nice to lean against something. 

 

you can hide from the wind, and sleep like a person: eyes closed, no tension. 

 

they have a little fire. someone has tobacco; they share a cigarette and sayra almost feels at home. they've been on the train so long. she thinks this is more dangerous, feeling at home on the train. there are a few moments of peace all the same.

 

when she first climbed aboard, she was so afraid to clamber up the rails; she had thought she would fall and die right then and there. once she was on, the train went so fast she couldn't believe she was expected to hold on,              let alone  _ sleep _ .               the tracks curved so sharply she couldn't believe she wouldn't fall. the noise was so loud she thought she'd lose her mind. the bumps were so sudden she knew she'd never see them coming. 

 

now she falls asleep easily, even when it means sleeping in shifts in between people on nothing but metal.

now she wanders the train to the ladder with a lazy hand extended to nothing for balance. 

there is only nothing on top of the train. 

  
  


the train hadn't changed.

she had. 

 

the train wasn't less dangerous. 

she was.

 

she'd always thought she could go north by herself. she sees lots of people who are, mostly men, boys like willie. she wonders how many more warnings her body can take. it is afraid enough without warnings. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


she doesn't want her bones to remember this. 

so when he leaves the train, it seems natural that she follow him. 

 

he had listened when she screamed. 

  
  


there is nothing on the train but warnings.

there is nothing on the train she can't get on the next one. 

there are trains all around them. 

there are police everywhere. 

let her father think anything separated them. 

it was she. 

  
  
  


in life, there are no guarantees and there is joy only if you hold onto it tightly. 

she knows this now. 

fear and dirt linger in her bones. some of it's good. she likes some of it, even.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


when willie sees her, he looks like she's robbed him, somehow. it sinks him to the floor. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ i'm not asking to be taken care of,  _ she tells him. _ i'm asking to go with you.  _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


she dreams of a lady's voice, of delicate things, of a home, 

pillows, warm sheets and the smell of her favourite liqueur drifting from a glass by her bed: 

that comforted feeling the morning after a night out: 

just sore enough to remember, just drunk enough still to be able to eat a huge breakfast, 

to stave off the sickness. she dreams of soft touches and 

a warm mouth. she smells her favourite liqueur. 

  
  
  
  
  


there are police, peering thru all the windows. 

 

she cannot understand why they don't get caught. 

maybe god is real and all the praying she does scared is finally paying off. 

she thanks whoever it is. 

she guesses it doesn't matter why. they're still free. 

 

this type of gratefulness is less treasured than the one she felt for the sweetsop. 

it's stupid. 

it's true. 

this gift will last longer. 

 

they find her uncle at an immigrant's shelter. at first, sayra feels nothing but relief. she'd left them, but all the same she was relieved to see her uncle. 

her father is dead.

 

when she cries, she feels foolish. 

she'd left, hadn't she? she'd worn thru with warnings;

she'd worn thru with his attentions when they were never intended

—he would never have come back if he hadn't been sent back—

but she can't stop crying all the same. 

 

just like when she thought she heard the gunshot, her mind lies to her. 

it's after she calmed down that she realizes willie has joined her at all. 

 

she thinks of his girlfriend, of how she died. 

she imagines the gun had misfired. 

she imagines lil mago

—she knows his name now, when he saw her as 

a something 

a something he could take while it screamed and begged for mercy—

she imagines if he had shifted a little this way, a little that: 

if his gun had fired and if instead of rinsing his blood from her face

the entire roof of the train had been sheeted with hers,

with bits of her skull and chunks of her brain,

if the whole car would have smelt

the saltpeter and charcoal that lingered with her for weeks

she imagines if it had all been over

in a second, in a blink of an eye, by chance.

that was what had happened, after all, to her dad: 

chaos. luck, against you.

a bump in the rails. 

 

eventually, she stops crying. 

it's stupid. 

  
  


it's true.

 

promise me, he says, when they sit by a river.  

 

you'll look for your family in new jersey, he tells her,

and she imagines they belong to her

she imagines she won't be awkwardly shoehorned into their life

like a cat someone found behind a building and gave to a neighbour

her father never meant to come home

she was never meant to belong to them

 

you have two sisters who don't have a father anymore, he reminds her. 

 

she's never met them. 

 

her father told her, but she doesn't remember their names. they're your family too, he had said. she didn't know them. she couldn't remember their names. 

 

_ i'd be trouble for them _ , she says. 

 

she can hear immigration vans circling. they'll cross the river soon. 

willie has a plan, a real one. she's seen him staring at the camera, flicking thru whatever people who could afford cameras thought was valuable enough to record.

sayra doesn't know what she'd fill the camera with. 

she's never thought so far ahead to want to look back. 

 

he trades it so a man will promise to get them across the river alive. if all it takes is a tire, sayra doesn't understand why they can't steal one from a broken car, find one by the road, with other trash and come back. 

he loves whoever is in that camera; she doesn't want him to trade it. 

he gives it away. it disappears into the man's pockets.

 

sayra wonders if willie feels that like a goodbye or like a loss. 

 

she finds out it takes more than a tire  when she gets into the river and feels the speed of it at the bottom.  it would tug her along if the man wasn't tugging her past it.  she lets her feet come off the bottom; she kicks across the bank and nothing else; 

she trusts him to battle the current. 

  
  


not a big deal, she'd thought, when willie had stayed behind and she'd gone first. the man with the tire would swim back; he'd bring willie. 

look how close to halfway across the river sayra was; the man would have willie 

back to her before her bones could remember the weight of being unable 

to push someone off.

she finds out it takes more than a tire when she needs to go back. 

 

they're killing him—

_ they're killing him _ —

 

_ they're killing him _ —

 

_ they're killing him; they are _ —

— _ going to kill him  _ and don't they know that he's hers?

he's hers more than the family in new jersey; she can't even find them on a map—

he's hers more than she's his—

she  _ needs _ him—

her bones can't forget the weight without him there like a promise—

without a companion who did only enough to promise to listen when she 

 

screams————————

  
  
  


the man with the tire is used to swimming against the current. 

he swims against her struggles. 

 

she realises willie died listening to her scream. 

she realises she watched while he died; he saved her and she could do nothing

 

when she crosses the river,

she realises willie is never going to join her on the other side. 

  
  
  


she gets to a minimall. 

  
  


she'd heard of them. they're real. 

  
  


so she dials a number someone once told her could save her life. 

 

she listens to the ringback and remembers 

when chanting the number was the worst thing she'd lived on the journey. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


she still has dirt from home in her bones. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


they'll scrub it out in new jersey. she'll be clean in new jersey. she'll be safe there; she'll be home. they'll belong to her, those sisters without a father. she'll bring them news. 

 

anything is better than not knowing. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> A fan fiction created for a Latin American film studies course I took in university. It's certainly not perfect and it is sadly in English, and even sadder it seems to be the first fiction for this great film. All the same, I hope you enjoyed it. Comment and kudos.


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